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Basic Search

The 'Basic Search' screen allows you to search for items by title, author, subject, journal title or by keyword(s) which can appear almost anywhere in the catalog record.

Enter your search word or phrase in the Search for: box, then select the type of search you wish to do in the adjacent box. Click on Search or press the Enter key to perform the search. To clear your choices and start over, press the Reset button.

Only Title and Keyword searches can be limited by library locations. Other limiting capabilities (limiting by language, item type, medium, and place of publication) are available by clicking on the Limits Options button. For information see Limits.

The Records per page box on the lower left controls the number of lines displayed on each screen in your search results.

Basic Searching

Keywords (use and, or, not)

A Keyword search retrieves items with selected words or phrases located anywhere in a catalog record. This search may be used for a single word as well as for more complex searches combining multiple words from one or more areas of the catalog record. Keyword offers users the most precise searching because you can use AND, OR, and NOT to specify relationships between words, and many special field codes for searching specific fields. Search field codes target retrieval to specified fields within the record, e.g. the notes or title fields. Results are displayed in a Brief Title List. Search limits are available.

To perform a Keyword search, enter search words or phrases in the search box using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) with parentheses for grouping, and/or preceded by field codes.

Search Tips:

  • Unless multiple words are indicated as a phrase with quotation marks, they must have Boolean operators (AND, OR or NOT) between them.
  • Words may be truncated using the question mark (?) symbol.
  • Using AND between words always narrows a search. AND specifies that both words must be contained in all the records retrieved. Example: children and reading

Title

A Title search locates library materials, regardless of type (books, journals, web sites, sound recordings, etc.), by title.

Search Tips:

  • Use a Keyword Search to names of things within a book or item, e.g., a music title track on a CD or the title of an individual chapter within a work.
  • Always omit initial articles (A, AN, THE, DER, LA, etc) in any language.
  • Enter words from the title of a work beginning with the first word (do not include initial articles, such as a, an, the or foreign language equivalents) followed by subsequent words in exact order.
  • Less is better than more. Just search the first few words of the title. E.g.
    mla style
    sound-producing instr
    new directions in ed
  • The words you type in have to be in exact order.

Results are displayed in a Title List. Search limits are available for date of publication, language, item type, medium, library location, and/or place of publication.

Author

Author searches locate works by author name. An "author" can be an individual, an editor, an association, a company, a conference, a performer, or a governmental agency. Omit commas, periods, apostrophes and most punctuation from author searches, but retain hyphens.

Search Tips:

  • When searching for a personal name, enter the name in inverted order (e.g., de kooning, willem).
  • When searching for a group, corporate or meeting name, enter the name in direct order (e.g., Federal Communications Commission).

Results are displayed in a Search Results List and may be browsed, forward and backward.

Journal Title

Same as Title search, but limited to the titles of journals, magazines, newspapers, etc.

Subject Heading

The Subject Heading search retrieves standard Library of Congress subject terms and their cross-references. Enter as much of the term as you know in order, beginning with the first word. Proper names can also be used as subject search terms. Results are displayed in a Search Results List and may be browsed, forward and backward.

Call Number

The Call Number search option retrieves catalog records by call numbers, eg.

LB2369 .G52 1984 or 808.02 .G53 1995

Enter the number in order (may contain alphabetic characters) starting with the first character, and include all punctuation and spaces. Call numbers with double cutters may file out of sequence. Search for them with a space between the first and second cutter, e.g., TP156.A35 A4. If this does not retrieve the item, try again with no space between the cutters, e.g., TP156.A35A35. 

If you only know part of a call number, enter as much of the call number as possible, followed by a "?" For example:

LB2369?

Ranked Keyword (use + for key terms)

A Ranked Keyword search may be useful when other search methods have not retrieved as much material as desired. The Ranked Keyword search is designed to retrieve the largest number of records possible, displaying them according to the system's evaluation of their relevance. This search retrieves words and phrases located anywhere in the catalog record.

To perform a Ranked Keyword search, enter the search words or phrases including the following punctuation:

quotes ( " ) surround exact phrases: "information technology"
+ indicates words that must appear: +grafitti +art
! indicates words that must not appear: web !internet
? indicates word truncation: psych? (searches psychology, psychological, psychiatrist, etc.)

Ranked Keyword searching should be used with caution for these reasons: 

  • It is very important to use punctuation, particularly the plus (+) to indicate that a word or phrase must appear in every record retrieved, to limit the size of the retrieval. 
  • Every additional word included in the search serves to expand the results (that is, an implied Boolean "or" is in effect). This can result in a huge result set that may slow response time and be difficult to navigate.
  • Use quotation marks (") to specify a phrase search.
  • The method the system uses to rank the relevance of materials is complex and may not always accord with the searcher's estimation of relevance. 

Although search results always display in a Ranked List according to the system's evaluation of their relevance, the use of special punctuation (see examples above) enables more precise retrieval and is strongly recommended. 

Author - Sorted by Title

This choice is recommended for extremely prolific authors and composers (e.g. Shakespeare, Mozart, Nietzsche). Enter a name in the Search for box, as you would for any other Author search. Results are displayed in a Search Results List. However, unlike in the Search Results List produced by the Author search, the names in the list are followed by titles in alphabetical order. Each line in the list represents the editions of a particular title, rather than all the works of a given author.